The Weight Band

The Weight Band

The world isn’t wanting for tribute bands. A quick online search will offer a plethora of bands playing note-perfect renditions of songs by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and more, sometimes in period-appropriate costumes. But The Weight Band might just be the only band out there that pays tribute to a specific sound. 

Just about every song on World Gone Mad, the group’s debut album, will remind you of the quintet of Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, better known as The Band. The layered vocal harmonies strain and soar like they did on songs like “I Shall Be Released” and “The Weight.” The guitars and keyboards sound like they’re coming from a concert stage, rustic and immediate instead of polished. There’s a live-in-the-studio feel to the whole thing, with the flaws just as prominent as the potent chemistry. 

And that’s not an accident — that’s precisely the way that The Weight Band planned it.  

“I wanted the album to sound like The Band, that’s for sure,” says singer/guitarist Jim Weider, who leads the group and wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on World Gone Mad. “We went with the idea that the songs had to sound like Band songs.”

Which, on the surface, seems like a weird thing to say for a group playing original material. How could someone purposely want to exist in the shadow of one of the most revered rock bands in history, one that arguably invented the Americana genre?  

Well, for one thing, it’s a sound that Weider adores.

“I just feel like that’s the music I grew up with and it should be carried on,” he says.

But more importantly, Weider was actually in The Band. After its initial breakup in 1977, Danko, Manuel, Helm and Hudson reformed the group without Robertson in 1983. Weider, who’d been playing alongside Helm in the great singer/drummer’s solo band, was brought on board in 1985.

“In 1985, they were going out on tour with Crosby, Stills & Nash, and asked if I’d come and sit in with them,” Weider recalls. “And after those shows they said, ‘We’d love you to join The Band.’”

Pianist Richard Manuel died in 1986, but the trio of Helm, keyboardist Garth Hudson and bassist Rick Danko carried on as The Band with Weider in a key role. He played on all three of The Band’s post-reunion albums (Jericho, High On The Hog and Jubilation), and co-wrote multiple songs on each of them. So when Weider launched The Weight Band in 2012 to pay tribute to his old gig, it seemed uniquely appropriate.

“I’d seen the reaction when Levon would do those Band tunes, and people just enjoyed it,” Weider says. “It was really nice for me to be able to come back and play that music because I’d taken a break from it. It was really a pleasure.”

And at first, all the group (Weider, drummer Michael Bram, keyboardists Brian Mitchell and Matt Zeiner and bassist Albert Rogers) did was play The Band’s songs. But as the group’s chemistry developed, Weider decided that that wasn’t enough. He wanted to carry the music forward, and that meant writing original songs in the vein of his old bosses.

“Being with them for so long, I knew what a Band song is supposed to be,” he says. “It has to be a story. There’s a certain groove to it; the song has to have a strong chorus. But it’s got to say something; it’s got to leave you with an image.”

And Weider decided it had to be recorded like The Band used to record, as well.

“To get that sound, the way I always recorded with them was, you set up live and track the songs,” he explains. “You get the vocals live and get all your solos live — ‘Let’s just set up and play.’ We’d do two or three passes and once it felt good, that was it.”

For some this might seem confusing — is The Weight Band a new musical force or just a group that plays a really good version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”? But for Weider, it’s not the newness or the oldness, but the feeling of the music that’s important.

“We’re not trying to be a tribute to The Band,” he says. “But we’re carrying on the tradition and keeping their music alive, and we’re going to keep growing while we carry on that tradition.”   


What: Irmo Okra Strut

Where: Irmo Community Park, 7507 Eastview Dr., Irmo

When: Friday, Sept. 28, 6-11 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 29, 9 a.m.-10 p.m

With: The Root Doctors, Blackwater Rhythm and Blues Band (Friday); The Weight Band, Rob Crosby (Saturday)

Price: Free

More: 803-781-7050, okrastrut.com

Similar Stories